Chapter 8 - THE MESSAGE
Norah felt something tighten in her chest.
The words hung in the air of the SUV, heavier than the silence around them. It was not a declaration of affection. It was a confession of isolation, and there is nothing in the world more intimate than a strong man admitting he is alone.
Daniel Russo, who controlled half the city, who could make a commissioner flinch and an importer flee to another country, who had not been able to open his own mouth for three weeks — Daniel Russo was entirely alone. He did not trust his capos. He did not trust his own soldiers. He had three men in the front of the vehicle who would take a bullet for him, and not one of them he would tell the truth to.
He trusted the girl who had broken his jaw.
The SUV turned onto the private road leading to the estate. The massive iron gates swung open on their automatic track, and the stone facade of the mansion rose out of the darkness ahead, looming like a fortress, which was what it was.
“I can’t be a killer,” Norah said quietly, looking down at the empty bourbon glass in her hand. The smell of it was still on her breath, warm and expensive. “I won’t pull a trigger for you. If that’s what you need, then you picked the wrong person, and I’ll walk out of the gate tonight and take my chances.”
Daniel took the glass from her hand and set it back in the console.
Then he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a small heavy object.
He placed it in her uninjured left hand.
Norah looked down. It was a compact matte-black pistol, small enough to fit in a palm, dense and cold and real, and her whole body recoiled from it before her mind had even finished identifying it. She tried to pull her hand back, but his hand closed over hers, wrapping her fingers around the grip, forcing her to hold it. His grip was absolute. She could not have opened her hand if she had wanted to.
He leaned in close. He could not speak — the wire, the swelling, the six weeks of straws — but his eyes said everything they needed to.
He let go of her hand. Then he tapped his own chest, and then pointed at the gun in her lap.
The message could not have been clearer if he had typed it.
Not for me. For you.
She had saved his life twice — once in the foyer, once in the dining room of a steakhouse with a chair leg and a bad decision — and by doing so she had painted a target on her own back that would never come off. She was not an invisible maid anymore. She was the shield standing between the king and the grave.
And in Chicago, shields got shattered.
Norah sat perfectly still as the SUV rolled to a halt in front of the marble steps. She felt the weight of the gun against her thigh, small and patient.
She thought about her mother’s debts, wiped out in a single afternoon by a stroke of ink. She thought about the shattered window and the crater in the wall. She thought about the dead waiter’s eyes, which had been, in the last second before Carmine fired, entirely surprised.
She slipped the gun into the pocket of her blazer.
May you like
The driver opened the door, and the freezing wind rushed in, and Norah stepped out onto the driveway — not behind Daniel, but beside him.
The ghost was gone. The player had finally joined the board.
